A friend recommended that I watch the Netflix documentary series, Live to 100: The Secrets of Blue Zones. Throughout the series, the host brings viewers to communities around the world that have a disproportionately high number of centenarians—people who have lived to be 100. Then he seeks to discover what it is about those people and their lifestyles that have enabled their longevity.

In most places in the world, women outlive men. Even in most of the communities with more than their share of centenarians, the women bring up the average lifespan and the men bring it down. But there is one exception. The goat-herding men of Sardinia, Italy live just as long as their women counterparts.

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What can explain the longevity of the Sardinian goatherds? Here’s one potential cause neuro-ophthalmologist, Dr. Mithu Storoni, points out in the documentary.

[Stress] is a benefit as long as it’s short term. The problem is, as soon as you keep the button pressed for very long, these effects become negative. … Today, in our urban world, through social media, news media, we are brought all the problems of the whole world. These are problems you cannot physically control. But you can control how you treat your goat to make sure your flock is healthy. And this sense of active coping where you can resolve the problems you are given is a very important part of mental health, cognitive longevity, and stress resilience.

This seems reasonable to me. I had my own brush with this thought several years go. I’m going to venture into territory here that can be uncomfortable and divisive. If you’ve reached your daily quota of doom-scrolling-induced blood pressure spikes, please feel free to skip the next several paragraphs.

I was—and I continue to be—personally offended by the January 6th 2021 attack on the US Capitol. I’m sure there are reasons for this buried beneath the surface that I haven’t yet discovered. But there is also the obvious reason. The attack wasn’t just an attack on a US building, or just an attack on elected US officials or just an attack on law enforcement (though it was all of those things, to be sure). The attack was designed to prevent the President of the US Senate (the Vice President of the US) from counting the votes—a task the Constitution requires the President of the Senate to Perform.

Article II, Section I says,

The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be President.

I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. In fact, I’ve taken that oath several times. It offends me on a personal level that some of my fellow Americans would attack—with violence and intent—the Constitution of the United States in the way they did on January Sixth, 2021. I’ve written more about this elsewhere if you’re interested and don’t think I need to go into greater detail here.

At various times, friends (who were, I believe, arguing in good faith) have asked me why I took January 6th so personally but I didn’t have the same emotional reaction to the unlawful possession of “CHAZ” in Seattle.

You may recall that, at the height of the George Floyd protests in 2020, protestors in Seattle that called themselves the “Capitol Hill Organized Protest” took possession of the city’s Capitol Hill and declared it an “Autonomous Zone” intentionally refusing access to local law enforcement. They dubbed this area the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” or “CHAZ.”

I can see why friends wanted to put these two events into the same category. They both involved lawlessness. They both represented an affront to our system of government. They both raised a proverbial middle finger in the general direction of law and order. So, aren’t they the same?

I can understand the partisan reasons people have for taking one more seriously than the other. One is coded as right and the other as left. But I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. Though I’m open to correction on this point, I have a pretty strong record of seeing through the partisanship to the broader (and more important) principles at stake.

There is one very important difference that I need to share with you for context. The CHAZ story unfolded in June of 2020. I was nearing the end of my time in the UK and it’s very possible that the 3,000 plus miles between me and the US also gave me some emotional distance. The Jan 6th attack on the Capitol was, of course, in January of 2021, several months after I had returned to the US. So that might have something to do with my emotional responses.

But still, I think there’s more to the distinction than that. As I heard reports of the CHAZ event, amidst a global pandemic, the killing of George Floyd and the protests that erupted in response, misinformation about how effective masks are and about the origins of the COVID virus, and a flaunting of social distancing rules by the head of my host government (then Boris Johnson), it felt like there was just too much news to be outraged at all the time.

In several cases, but specifically in the case of CHAZ in Seattle, I found myself asking: “I know that’s a problem, but is it a Joe Chapa problem?”

You know as well as I do that the internet news ecosystem thrives on outrage—a trend cable news networks started decades before. So, if everything out there in the world is being presented to me in such a way as to drive outrage, and thereby drive clicks and eyeballs, how can I determine which stories should outrage me and which I can set to one side? One way to answer that question is to ask, which problems are Joe Chapa problems?

The way I read and listen to news now makes me a little—even if just a very little—like the goatherds in the Blue Zones documentary. I can choose either to live in a constant state of anxiety about the problems in the world that I cannot control and that only peripherally impact me, or, like Gandolf fighting the Balrog, I can say to some devastating, or terrifying, or mystifying news stories, thus far and no farther. “You shall not pass.” I will not allow my level of anxiety to be affected by this story. This is a problem. But it’s not a Joe Chapa problem.

I have nothing positive to say about the CHAZ protestors. They did behave lawlessly. Their actions were an affront to law enforcement. And if I lived in Seattle, that would be a Joe Chapa problem. But I don’t. And I’m willing to allow local issues to be local.

January 6th was qualitatively different. It wasn’t an attack on a local or state government of which I am not a part. It was an attack on my Constitution. As I watched the January 6th story unfold—first on live video on that day and then in the many stories and court cases that followed—there was nothing I could do to shape the story. But I was willing to allow it to affect me emotionally. I was willing to let that one in because it was a Joe Chapa problem.

Ok, rapid fire. Here are some headlining stories in the 2024 and 2025. I’ll mention the story and then tell you whether it’s a Joe Chapa problem or not.

* Trump assassination attempt: Joe Chapa problem

* Hurricane Milton: Not a Joe Chapa problem

* Diddy: Not a Joe Chapa problem

* Baltimore Key Bridge: Not a Joe Chapa problem

* Luigi Mangione: Not a Joe Chapa problem

* Plane/helicopter crash at DCA: Joe Chapa problem

* California wildfires: Not a Joe Chapa problem

* China’s DeepSeek AI: Joe Chapa problem

* The Defense Department’s response to DEI in the US military: Joe Chapa problem

I know how this looks. You could easily walk away from this list and think I’m some kind of monster who has no compassion for sexual assault victims (Diddy) or for people who lost their homes (CA wildfires). Of course I care about the people who were hurt in these and many other cases. But the question here is not about which stories elicit an emotional response. The question is about which stories I allow to become burdens that I carry with me. I’ve only got so much room in the ruck sack and I have to be judicious about what to carry.

At this point in my life, I’m carrying only Joe Chapa problems. Which problems are you allowing yourself to carry?

Credit Where It’s Due

The subtitle of this post is, of course, a lyric from Doechii’s “Anxiety.”

As I close out this week’s post, I have a humble plea. I’m getting ready to build ads for other social media platforms to try to grow the Views Expressed readership (and listenership) and I’d like to use your words to do it.

If you like what you’ve been hearing, would you consider writing a brief testimonial and sharing it with me through whatever means your comfortable with (that could be a comment, an email, a note, DM, carrier pigeon, whatever). I’m not looking for anything lengthy or detailed—just a simple statement about what you like about Views Expressed.

If you don’t like what you’re reading, hey, I get it. Sometimes I don’t love what I’m writing. There is no pressure here of any kind. Just an opportunity to share you thoughts if you got ‘em.

Thank you. I’ll talk to you again next Thursday.

The Views Expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any part of the US Government.

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